California Counties Report Surprising Results with Childhood Obesity in Nutrition Program Study

According to a recent update by the Federation of American Societies for Experiemental Biology (FASEB), "the percentage of overweight or obese children in test school  drops from 56 percent to 38 percent over the course of a single school year thanks to a new nutrition program that fits into Common Core standards."

Researchers say the program did not have intentions on being so effective so quickly. They expected to mainly improve nutrition education amongst the students with the long-term goal of decreasing the obesity rate (measured by Body Mass Index).

The new nutrition and wellness program is called "Shaping Healthy Choices Program" which included four elementary schools in two of California's school districts, however only one school from each district implemented the program between the 2012-2013 school year. The results spoke for themselves as the participating school's children dropped their BMI percentile by nearly 9 points, while the non-participating school had no change to their BMI.

The program used students, parents, the school, and the community partners to help build healthy habits. The program implemented classroom nutrition activites as well as physical activity lessons. Students participated in gardening, cooking demonstrations and recipes, health-related activites for school events, and they went as far as even changing the school lunchroom to include a salad bar. The students increased their vegetable intake by 40 percent in one year.

One of the lead investigators of this study, Rachel Scherr, Ph.dD., an assistant project scientist at the University of California at Davis says "For us, the most important thing is that the kids and their families really enjoyed the program. It was very successful, and I think it was critical that we focused on empowering kids and their families to want to make a change."

Scherr also adds "There's room for a program like this at all schools. It's very cost-effective, and it's been designed tso schools can adopt the whole program or just the parts that are most feasible for them."

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